Artisan Roast - CPCK Co-Operative DR Congo - Washed

We are very excited to bring our first Congolese coffee to Artisan Roast from the CPCK smallholder co-operative. The DRC used to be a much more visible producing country thirty years ago and is coming back into the limelight with the support of several, quality focused initiatives. Coffee grows from the shore of the lake at 1500 metres above sea level up into the rolling shade covered hills of the Kivu area. Smallholdings in the DRC, as with neighbouring Rwanda across Lake Kivu, are tiny at around 1 hectare or less. This gives each small holding family a few hundred coffee trees on which to make a livelihood.

Processing in the DRC is similar in style to much of East Africa - small holders deliver their ripe coffee cherries to centralised washing and processing stations where it's further sorted before being pulped. he resulting cup in the CPCK coffee bears all the hallmarks of high quality, high grown red bourbon coffee from the great lakes region. Bold and beautiful red berry flavours of cherry and pomegranate sit alongside treacle toffee and chocolate. These flavours are supported by a syrupy sweet and viscous mouth feel and lead onto a structured black grape like acidity.

This syrupy body and bold fruit character lends the coffee very well to espresso. We've been working on a brew ratio of 1:2.1 at 93 degrees centigrade at the roastery to bring out the cherry and treacle toffee along with a little sweet tamarind on the finish. As a filter the finer more subtle characteristics come into play - a subtle yet heady florality works very well with the cherry notes and structured high quality grape like acidity.